The western prairie province of Alberta is sometimes described as the most conservative province in Canada. It's economy is dominated by oil and the rural areas are populated by ranchers and grain farmers many of whom have a conservative outlook. The Progressive Conservatives (PCs) have been in power for 44 years but they have had many internal problems lately.

Many conservatives split off from the party several years ago and formed the Wild Rose party to the right of the PC's. Polls showed that it might win the last election but the PCs won as many were concerned that Wild Rose views on social issues were too far to the right.

However PC leader Alison Redford, later resigned after a scandal over expenses. The new elected leader is a well respected former federal Conservative, Jim Prentice, who was tasked with fixing the problems within the party.

Prentice made numerous errors including enticing nine Wild Rose party members to cross over to the Conservatives including their leader. No doubt he thought this was a great move and had merged the right together as well as destroying the Wild Rose Party. However, this irritated some of the more progressive members of the PC party and only served to infuriate Wild Rose supporters. None of those who crossed the floor were re-elected this time around. The former leader did not even manage to win nomination. Far from being wiped out the Wild Rose supporters rebuilt the party and were determined to punish the PC's even if it meant the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) should win. There was no strategic voting by the Wild Rose supporters to save the Conservatives. If anything, some of them may have decided to vote NDP.

At dissolution of the legislature the PC's held 70 of 87 seats. The NDP had only a few seats and Wild Rose had seen half its members cross the floor. Prentice had just introduced a "bad news" austerity budget made necessary by the huge decline in oil prices depleting the provincial coffers. Prentice thought that he would be easily elected. He called the election a year early. He could have waited until next year when it was scheduled but no doubt he thought the political situation would be much worse. He had no idea how bad it already was.

At last count the NDP won 53 seats giving them a majority. The Wild Rose Party became the official opposition with 21 seats and the PC's managed only 10 seats although that is far more than the NDP had at dissolution. Prentice resigned both as leader and also as a member for his constituency in which he had just been elected. There were two other parties who elected one member each, the Alberta Party and the Liberal party. The Liberal party is prominent federally but does not have much support provincially in Alberta.

The leader of the NDP, Rachel Notley, ran what has been described as a flawless campaign. The NDP was expected to triumph in the capital Edmonton but,much to the chagrin of business people associated with big oil, it triumphed in Calgary as well. Even more surprising, it won many seats in smaller cities and even rural areas where in the past it has never won seats. This is the first time ever that the NDP has won in Alberta. Notley will have a difficult task ahead because the Alberta economy is in a huge slump as the result of the drop in oil prices. She will need to move cautiously or she could lose her support quite quickly allowing the conservatives to regain power in four years.

Ken Hanly

Ken is a retired philosophy professor living in the boondocks of Manitoba, Canada, with his Filipina wife. He enjoys reading the news and writing articles. Politically Ken is on the far left of the political spectrum on many issues.

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